Jul 24th 2022

The Most Damning Hearing Yet

by Alon Ben-Meir

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is an expert on Middle East politics and affairs, specializing in peace negotiations between Israel and the Arab states. For the past twenty five years, Dr. Ben-Meir has been directly involved in various negotiations and has operated as a liaison between top Arab and Israeli officials. Dr. Ben-Meir serves as senior fellow at New York University's School of Global Affairs where he has been teaching courses on the Middle East and negotiations for 18 years. He is also a Senior Fellow and the Middle Eastern Studies Project Director at the World Policy Institute. Dr. Ben-Meir hosts "Global Leaders: Conversations with Alon Ben-Meir," a series of debates and conversations with top policy-makers around the world. He also regularly holds briefings at the US State Department for international visitors. Dr. Ben-Meir writes frequently and has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines and websites including the Middle East Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Le Monde, American Chronicle, the Week, the Political Quarterly, Israel Policy Forum, Gulf Times, the Peninsula, The Jerusalem Post, and the Huffington Post. He also makes regular television and radio appearances, and has been featured on networks such as CNN, FOX, PBS, ABC, al Jazeera (English and Arabic), and NPR. He has authored six books related to Middle East policy and is currently working on a book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dr. Ben-Meir holds a masters degree in philosophy and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University. He is fluent in English, Arabic, and Hebrew.

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol held another hearing yesterday which was, no less than all the previous hearings, of historic significance. These are among the most important hearings in our nation’s history, for they detail the unprecedented depravity and dishonor of an American president, and they are crucial to exposing the existential danger that his political presence still represents.

Thursday’s hearing focused on what must be the darkest and most morally outrageous three hours in the annals of the American presidency: the 187 minutes in which Trump refused to take any action whatsoever to quell a violent insurrectionary mob as it stormed the Capitol building, thwarting the peaceful transfer of power and seeking to kill the Vice President of the United States, who took shelter just feet away from his would-be assassins. The Committee revealed that Pence’s security detail believed that the mob was likely to discover their location and that they were not going to survive its violent onslaught – so much so that some were making calls to say goodbye to family members in the event they did not make it home alive.

For three hours Trump watched the television as violence consumed the Capitol; and in all that time he did not make a single call to the Secretary of Defense, to the Attorney General, to the Secretary of Homeland Security, or to the Vice President for that matter. For three hours, against the unequivocal advice of his counsel, friends, and family, Trump purposefully and steadfastly declined to give the mob he had summoned any signal to disperse, to exit the building peacefully, or to simply cease threatening the life of his vice president or other members of Congress. The president knew full well, and better than anyone, that his mob of supporters were hanging on every word he said or tweeted; he knew beyond any doubt that had he told them to leave the Capitol they would have complied – but he would not do so for the simple reason that he wanted the attack to continue.

Trump would not take any action to halt the insurrection because the attack served his unscrupulous designs: for while the mob held the Capitol, the Senate could not reconvene to certify the election result, and had the vice president been maimed or murdered then he would no longer be in a position to preside over the proceedings as specified in the Constitution. Indeed, after Trump knew the Capitol had been breached, he sent out a tweet at 2:24pm which served only to pour gasoline over the conflagration he had already ignited, describing Mike Pence as lacking the courage to do Trump’s bidding; immediately following that disgraceful message to his fanatical followers the mob swelled in size, and grew more enraged and emboldened.

Trump’s inaction during those three pivotal hours was not merely a dereliction of duty: it was a deliberate, indefensible decision on his part to allow the mob to continue its desecration of the Capitol, its assault on our democracy, and its unbridled effort to impede the transfer of executive authority, all so that Trump could maintain power. Only after it became clear that the insurrectionists would not be successful did the president finally stand before the TV cameras and tell the mob to leave the Capitol and return home. He did not condemn the violence, he did not issue any reprimand to those who had defiled the Capitol, he did not express a single word of support for those who valiantly fought against the insurrection and sought to protect this Republic from being overthrown by a violent swarm of his deluded supporters. Instead, he praised the mob as patriots and told them how much he loves them.

The former President of the United States, Donald Trump, betrayed this country and the American people – both Republicans and Democrats – in a manner so despicable and outrageous that the misdeeds of all his forty-four predecessors pale by comparison. He is the very embodiment of demagoguery: his lies are poisonous and his hollow vanity boundless. He has brought this Republic to the brink of dissolution with his contempt for the rule of law and the institutions of democracy. He forfeited the public trust when he determined that his hold on power was more important than the oath he took before the country and before God to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, more important than honoring the sacrifice of countless Americans who gave their life so that the Republic could survive, more important than the very continuation of this noble experiment in popular government.

If he should ever hold office again, then the shame will be on our heads – for no one can say now that they did not know what this man was, or what he was capable of doing. Trump’s lust for power is insatiable and as we have witnessed, he resorted to any means, however illegal, to stay in power regardless of the unimaginable damage he inflicts on the country.

Trump is corrupt to the core, a traitor who deserves nothing but contempt and to spend the rest of his life behind bars because he remains a menace to this country and an existential threat to our democratic institutions.

____________
Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies for over 20 years.


alon@alonben-meir.com  Web: www.alonben-meir.com

For media inquiries, contact Kim Hurley at 212.600.4267 or at kimberlee@alonben-meir.com.

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EXTRACT: "Although Ukraine’s armed forces are outnumbered by those of Russian President Vladimir Putin invading our country, we take heart from the growing support we are receiving from friends abroad. Nobody should forget that this is not just an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine; it is an assault on the free world. ---- Putin has been at war with the free world for decades. "
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EXTRACT: "Moreover, with China sharing the Kremlin’s interest in containing the advance of liberal democracy around the world, Putin could count on the Chinese to provide an additional economic lifeline by purchasing Russian gas. But this new relationship will not be costless. As the world continues to divide into separate technological and economic blocs, Russia will become even more dependent on China, implying a loss of strategic autonomy. Russia may have a powerful military; but with a GDP similar to that of Spain and Italy, it is far from being an economic power."
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EXTRACT: "The financial measures just announced against Russia are unprecedented for a country of its size. This of course means it’s impossible to predict exactly how their impacts will reverberate around the Russian – and global – economy. And we still need to see the exact details of the plan. But on their face they threaten the collapse of the Russian ruble, a run on Russian banks, hyperinflation, a sharp recession and high levels of unemployment in Russia, as well as turmoil in international financial markets."
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EXTRACTS: "The fear is that Moscow is backing itself into a diplomatic corner where the use of force is its only way to remain credible." ----- "The Ukrainian population has also been mobilizing in support of the troops since the seizure of Crimea and the war in Donbas. And according to a poll taken in December 2021 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 58% of Ukrainian men and almost 13% of women declared that they are ready to take up arms. A further 17% and 25% more said they would resist through other means. In what would be a classic case of asymmetrical warfare, resistance from Ukraine’s population could therefore prove a serious thorn in Moscow’s side."
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EXTRACT: ".....one wonders how Chinese President Xi Jinping views Russia’s intervention in Kazakhstan, which shares a nearly 1,800-kilometer (1,120-mile) border with China, especially in light of Putin’s earlier comments diminishing the history of Kazakhstan’s independent statehood. (He has shown similar contempt for the independence of Belarus, the Baltic states, and Ukraine.)"
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EXTRACT: ".....a scenario in which Trump (or one of his allies) is designated president by the House of Representatives after the 2024 election probably belongs in the realm of political-thriller fiction.  Now consider the unlikely event that Trump were nominated and won a clear Electoral College or popular-vote majority in 2024. Rather than establish the white-nationalist dictatorship of progressive nightmares, an elderly second-term Trump would most likely be an even more ineffectual figurehead in a party dominated by conventional Republicans than he was in his first four years. If Italian democracy could survive three terms of Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister, American democracy can survive two terms of Trump. None of this is to suggest that American democracy is not under threat. Populist demagogues like Trump are symptoms of a disease in the body politic. The real threat to American democracy is the disconnect between what the bipartisan US political establishment promises and what it delivers. This problem predates Trump by decades and helps to explain his rise. "